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Mere Atheism; Or, You Can’t Justify Your Teapot.

There
is a scene in Joseph Heller’s Catch 22
where the Chaplin is being interrogated about the theft of Major Major’s
correspondence and is asked by a C.I.D. officer about his religious
persuasion.The Chaplin declares himself
an Anabaptist, which the officer finds a little suspicious: “Chaplin, I once
studied Latin.I think it’s only fair to
warn you of that before I ask my next question. Doesn’t the word Anabaptist
simply mean that you’re not a Baptist?”

The
Chaplin protests, but the officer pushes the point “are you a Baptist?”, “no
sir”, “than you are not a Baptist, aren’t you?” Defined by an absence of
belief, the C.I.D. officer credits the Chaplin with certain malicious actions
against the war effort.Atheists often
find themselves in a similar situation to the Chaplin, defined by an absence of
belief. Theists and religious apologists infer ex nihlo that atheists hold a series of positive beliefs that have
no necessary connection to the
position of atheism, often the notion that “something came from nothing” or
that in the absence of god “anything is permissible”.

Atheism
is not a cosmology, it entails no necessary belief that something came from
nothing, that the universe is undergoing an endless oscillation between cosmic
inflation and cosmic implosion, or any particular cosmological theory.
Nietzsche thought morality was a shadow play ofthe master’s will to power and the slave’ resentment; whilst the
Utilitarians hold that morality is a hedonic calculus in which right and wrong
are determined by the utility of an actions consequences.Atheism implies no ethical theory except the
rejection of divine command theory.Atheism
is not a worldview; atheism is a position on a single issue: atheos – no god.

There
are atheists that hold that ‘god’ is a ‘failed hypothesis’ which can be
demonstrated through an absence of the evidence to be expected in a designed
universe or certain logical conundrums like the paradox of omnipotence, yet, the
minimum requirement is a lack of belief in the existence of god or gods. This
lack of belief is often arrived at through an application of the principle of parsimony and the inability
of theists to mount convincing arguments or produce evidence in favour of god’s
existence. This definition of atheism is sometimes thought to be a more
appropriate definition of agnosticism, even Dawkins admits that he is technically
an agnostic; but the use of the latter term creates a false equivalence between
belief and non-belief, which belies the importance of the principle of parsimony
and obscures the burden of proof.

The
principle of parsimony is derived from a maxim attributed to William of Occam
that states “entities are not to be multiplied without necessity”, which is
often taken to mean that between two accounts with equal explanatory power the
simpler explanation should be preferred. “Occam’s razor”carves away unnecessary propositions and
provided the first steps towards modern theories of knowledge and the
scientific method that later flourished in the Age of Enlightenment. It should
be remembered that the Enlightenment’s motto, according to Immanuel Kant, was “sapere aude!” (dare to know!),which he described as a process of
“freeing oneself from self-incurred tutelages” and having the courage to use
one’s own intelligence in the face of official pieties and doctrines. Not least
of which were the pieties and doctrines of the Church that stood in the way of
Galileo and Darwin’s insights into the place of human beings in the universe –
neither at its centre, nor atop a great chain of being.Applied to the question of god’s supposed
existence, if the principle of parsimony is accepted, it follows that a god’s
existence should not be postulated unless compelling theistic arguments can be
mounted to establish god’s necessity or explanatory power.

Nevertheless,
theists often try and shirk this responsibility and shift the burden of proof
onto non-believers by maintaining that god’s existence is self-evidently true. Bertrand
Russell, in Is There a God?,
illustrated this common presuppositional fallacy with the analogy of a
celestial teapot:

“Many orthodox people speak as though
it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of
dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest
that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun
in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided
I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our
most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my
assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of
human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.”

Without
evidence of a celestial teapot, there is no reason to postulate its existence –
aside from the didactic value it proffers in demonstrating the inanity of
religious apologists who attempt to evade the burden of justifying their own beliefs.It often appears that god’s existence is
something of a special case; as if the standards of logic and justification
that govern secular discussions are abrogated in favour of those who believe
without evidence. But there is no reason why this should be the case. In fact,
it violates the principle of parsimony that is accepted in most areas of investigation
and discussion. Without evidence of god there is no reason to suppose its
existence. Deductive arguments for the necessity of god’s existence tend to
resolve into special pleading or question begging. Even if the deductive
arguments held water, purely logical arguments are insufficient to prove the
existence of a god-like entity: it is an empirical question that can’t be solved
by the hand waving of theologians. In the end, there are atheists because
theists can’t justify their teapot.

Comments

There are arguments against Russell's teapot analogy that I could have engaged with or gone through why exactly I don't find Thomas Aquinas or Saint Anselm's arguments for the existence of god convincing but I cut it short, unfortunately.

I'd have to do some reading again to engage with it again. I wrote this and then promptly stopped thinking about it. The problems and pleasures of secular existence are so much more interesting.

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